


The Boy Who Healed The Rift

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He sealed the rift," the Master says, "at the Medusa Cascade. Single handed." He shakes his head, hiding real awe behind the parody of it. "And look at him now - stealing screwdrivers. How did he ever come to this?" He pauses and pretends to think. "Oh, yer. Me," he says, and laughs.<br/>This is that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Healed The Rift

They haven’t even reached the end of their first century when Koschei falls in love with Theta. It comes as something of a surprise in the middle of Koschei’s ordered life: the first major event he hasn’t planned for. He can pin-point the moment exactly though, which is some comfort. It’s not some wishy-washy thing that has been “coming on gradually”, whatever that means. It’s a fact. A change of state. Something he can categorise in himself, like he later categorises new regenerations.

They have been sharing the same rooms at the Academy for eighty-two years, during which time they have been lab partners and friends, occasionally even enemies but rarely for long periods of time. It’s more convenient not to fight - the library only has sixty-four wings, and it’s unlikely they’ll be forgiven if another one burns down. Mostly, though, they are people who live together, nothing more, nothing less. For eighty-two years, Koschei has been, at times, intrigued and irritated and amused by Theta who is (usually) one of his favourite people, but that isn’t love. That’s prolonged exposure.

He certainly doesn’t love Theta when he is woken up at two in the morning on The Day by Theta’s pillow smacking into the side of his head. Theta doesn’t sleep as much as normal people, but he doesn’t usually disturb his roommate on purpose, only by accident.

“Wake _up_ ,” Theta says and hits him again.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Koschei mutters, which is a mistake because Theta takes this as a sign that his brain is active enough to deal with the conversation.

“You won’t mind when I tell you,” he insists.

“ _Won’t_ I?” Koschei says, opening his eyes at last to glare at his roommate, who is now seated on the end of his bed. Theta is already dressed in dark, practical, off-worlder clothes and, even though Koschei’s brain would rather be asleep, it dutifully presents him with its deductions. Firstly: Theta has woken him up for more than a chat, and secondly: wherever he’s going afterwards, he wants to be able to move easily and go unseen. With these conclusions in mind, Koschei drawls, “I find that hard to believe.”

Theta sighs. “Just listen. I’ve been thinking, and before you say anything, yes, I do that sometimes. You know, there’s that rift in the Medusa Cascade…”

“I’ve heard of it,” Koschei admits. He sits up cross-legged on the bed because, now he’s awake, he might as well be awake with some dignity. “Giant hole in the fabric of space and time, into which several of our less exciting systems are habitually sucked. Widely regarded as a cosmic tragedy. What about it?”

“I think,” Theta says, “that is, I’m fairly certain that I know how to seal it.”

“Really,” Koschei says.

“Yes.”

“So?”

“What?”

“Great,” Koschei says. “Well done. If you want validation you’ve got it: I’m impressed. Will there be anything else or can I go back to sleep?”

It’s a rhetorical question. His eyes have accustomed themselves to the gloom and he can see another pile of black clothing hidden by the darkness of Theta’s lap. The idiot clearly has bigger plans than a metaphorical pat on the back.

Theta grins. “We’re going to avert the cosmic tragedy and seal the rift. You and me. Tonight. Right now, actually.”

“Look Theta,’ Koschei says, firmly. “You’re only ninety. I grant you that you’re reasonably intelligent, but you’re not exceptional. Do you honestly think that no one else, in the entire history of our race, has ever worked out how to heal the rift?”

“Of course not,” Theta says, “but they haven’t done anything about it, have they?”

“No, because we’re _Time Lords_ ,” Koschei explains, as if to a child even younger than Theta. “Sworn never to interfere, only to watch. Remember?”

“And you abide by rules like that, do you?” Theta asks, quirking his eyebrows.

So, it’s a dare, then. If Koschei had any real sense he would refuse to take it, tell Theta to fuck off for at least another six hours, and try and go back to sleep. If he had any real sense.

He sighs, and Theta laughs and throws him the set of clothes. “Get dressed, Koschei. I need you to help me steal a TARDIS.”

*

At ninety, they look old enough – like young humanoid adults – and mentally feel enough like fully fledged Time Lords that they can move through the citadel without being stopped immediately. The corridors are mostly deserted anyway because it’s the middle of the night and they reach the hanger without any sort of trouble.

Koschei pulls the sonic lock-picking device – a joint invention from five summers before – from the back pocket of his trousers and points it at the single lock on the hanger door. The device buzzes and flares blue and the lock clicks open. They grin at each other. It is almost embarrassingly easy. With typical arrogance, the authorities have not even stationed guards around the space/time vehicles, so confident are they that no one but a Time Lord could ever penetrate the citadel, and that no Time Lord would ever take a TARDIS without permission.

Theta selects one disguised as a marble archway, apparently at random, and pushes the door. It isn’t locked.

The console room glows invitingly as if it has been waiting for them. Theta bounds up to the console and circles it, cooing with delight. Koschei approaches more slowly, as if the TARDIS is a frightened novice. He flexes his fingers over the controls.

They have both flown simulators before – one of them, Koschei thinks smugly, considerably better than the other – but this is their first time inside a proper ship. It’s madness to think they can fly this thing now, the two of them barely out of childhood, but madness of a rather glorious kind.

Gently, Koschei touches the Time Rotor and the hand break and the navigation circuits. He feels the TARDIS reach into his mind with its unfathomable, ageless intelligence. Already, there is a trace of Theta hovering in the TARDIS’s consciousness from where he’s fiddling with the main computer, getting it ready for take-off. He seems to be making most of the calculations correctly, so Koschei leaves him alone and reaches back into the TARDIS with his mind. With its guidance, he makes several adjustments to the switches controlling the prospective altitude and external dimensions, and, when the TARDIS tells him it's ready to fly, eases the clutch upwards and slams the throttle down. The Time Rotor rises and falls, a horrific wheezing, whirring noise fills the room, and they are in the vortex.

The two not-yet-Time Lords look at each other across the console and laugh and laugh and laugh, and still Koschei is not in love with Theta. They are both too intent on their own daring, on their own cleverness, on the wonderful time machine they have only minimal control over, to worry about the other as more than a witness to their own triumph.

*

After an unquantifiable length of time, the TARDIS re-materialises in the Medusa Cascade, only two hours later than Theta specified at takeoff, which is, frankly, astonishing. Reluctantly Koschei releases the controls, which have left deep imprints on his palms, and pulls the door-release.

Theta has gone off into another part of the ship, his job over almost as soon as it began, and Koschei is completely alone. He walks over to the door where the cascade of Medusa sparkles, red and green and purple, looking almost too real to be real. And there, stretching across it like a giant electric blue wound, is the rift: a hole in the fabric of everything. Beautiful and terrifying.

Koschei knows there is a thin atmospheric shell about a metre away from the TARDIS exterior. He also knows that that shell is all that prevents him being sucked out into airless, limitless space, where he will be unable to scream as regeneration after regeneration asphyxiates and combusts and reforms, until, finally, his corpse drifts through the rift into Rassilon knows where. Vertigo sweeps through him and he steps away from the door with a shudder before he falls through it.

“We’re here,” he calls to Theta, walking round to the other side of the console, as far away from the hole in the side of the TARDIS as possible. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

Koschei drums his fingers against the console and tries to think of something to do. He slouches against the chair in front of the main screen. “So, are you going to tell me what this plan is?”

“No. You’d only take the credit for it if I did,” Theta says brightly, clumping back into the room.

“Please don’t insult me,” Koschei drawls without turning around. An arm reaches past him and attaches a carabina to a metal loop on the console. An arm in a spacesuit. Koschei twists to look at his roommate properly. “You look ridiculous,” he says, because Theta does. Orange is nobody’s colour, particularly not Theta’s. “ _Why_ … are you wearing that?”

“To prevent my untimely death,” Theta says, tugging on the rope attached to the carabina, testing its strength. He gives Koschei a mocking frown. “I would have thought that was obvious.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Koschei says, as Theta dons his helmet. “The rope isn’t going to hold. You’ll be sucked into the rift.”

Theta grins. “Wanna bet?” he says, then he runs towards the door with surprising grace and jumps through the atmospheric shell and into space and the cascade and the rift.

“Ten pounds says you don’t come back,” Koschei yells after him, but he’s fairly sure Theta can’t hear him any more.

He walks to the door, the rope hissing past his feet, and stares out into the cascade. Theta is a tiny orange blob floating amongst specks of light. It makes Koschei dizzy to look at him. He hates Theta for doing this to him, for leaving him behind to watch.

The rope goes taut with a grunt and Koschei finds himself thinking, for a moment, how funny it would be if he cut it and let Theta drift for a while before materialising the TARDIS around him. That would show the smug bastard.

He shakes his head and is about to wander back to the console, which must surely have games stored in its memory banks somewhere, when an enormous wave of psychic energy crashes into him. It’s Theta, of course, he’d know that cluttered mind anywhere, but now it’s amplified at least a thousand times by the rift and Theta’s thoughts force his own to one side. Koschei’s head is filled with mutually exclusive memories and preferences: his mother is dead and alive, he does and doesn’t like apples, he has two sets of names and two reflections. This must be what it feels like to go insane.

Koschei gasps and whimpers until the TARDIS wraps itself around his mind in a comfortable shield, releasing the pressure slightly, pulling him back into himself, but it’s still too much and, eventually, he does the only sensible thing possible and passes out.

*

The TARDIS is singing to him. It prods him gently, letting him know he’ll want to be awake for what happens next. Blearily, Koschei pushes himself off the grating and hauls himself upright using the console as a crutch. He still feels unsteady on his feet and in his mind.

The console room is filled with blue light, which dims as Theta’s bulky, spacesuited body fills it and brightens again as Theta touches down gently and moves into the room. He twists his helmet off and throws it to one side where it bounces and rolls into a corner.

“The rift is closed,” he announces grandly. Then he grins, “And I _think_ you owe me a tenner.”

Koschei stares at him.

Theta’s hair is damp and stuck to his face. The light from the sealed rift glows behind him turning him into in a disgustingly dramatic silhouette. This is the moment. It hasn’t been “coming on gradually”, whatever that means.

Up until this moment, Koschei would have said that Theta was intelligent, but not exceptional. He would have said that Theta was intriguing, irritating, amusing: a worthy friend and disciple. He would have said that he was stronger than Theta.

Now, he can see the power that was always before tightly coiled inside Theta blazing out of him. He can see that Theta is the type of person who would throw himself into an inter-dimensional rift without really thinking about what a ludicrous idea it is, that he is the type of person who could successfully channel its energy through his own mind, sewing the torn edges of the universe back together like a surgeon. It is a plan that should never have worked, and yet it clearly has through sheer force of will. The rift is healed and several systems too pathetic to save themselves are saved.

Backlit by the cascade, Theta seems to glow round the edges, beautiful and terrifying, and Koschei wants to run. Run and never look back, because he can see how easy it would be for Theta to crush him with just as little thought. More than that though, he wants to grab Theta by the metal lip of the spacesuit and kiss him soundly, press as much of himself into this luminous being as possible and fall into him. Love is like vertigo, Koschei realises, and it is entirely possible he’s about to lose his balance this time.

But he is still Koschei and Koschei is his own god. So, without making a conscious decision, he lets go of the console and punches Theta as hard as possible and feels the cartilage of Theta’s nose splinter beneath his knuckles.

“ _Fuck_.” Theta staggers backwards and onto the floor. “Whaddas dat for, you maniac? I dink you broke my nose.”

“Don’t _ever_ do that again,” Koschei says, trembling with fear and lust and power. In ninety years, he has never punched anyone before and it feels _incredible_. “Do you understand? Never. There’s a reason Time Lords don’t throw their consciousnesses around. It drives people mad. You realise that you almost cracked my mind open with your ridiculous stunt?”

“Id was de only way I could seal de rifd,” Theta mutters, trying unsuccessfully to staunch the flow of blood with the shiny surface of his glove. “An you seem fine do me.”

“For which I thank my formidable psychic defences,” Koschei sneers. He sends a silent apology to the TARDIS and hopes it can understand his betrayal.

“Id was de only way,” Theta repeats, firmly. His eyes are watering with pain, tears mingling with the blood and mucus and sweat already running down his face. He is attempting to cling to his dignity but the battle is predominantly lost, and Koschei softens and kneels in front of him.

“Here, let me,” he says, pushing Theta’s fingers away from his crushed nose. “Now, this is really going to hurt, but it’s better than spending the rest of this regeneration looking like you’ve run into a wall. Ready?”

Theta nods and Koschei deftly snaps his nose back into place. Theta hisses in through his teeth, but he doesn’t cry out, doesn’t even whimper. Koschei considers kissing him, gently like a pardon, like a humble request for absolution. He doesn’t care that Theta’s lips are covered in several different kinds of disgusting bodily fluid. It’s too late. He’s really in trouble now.

He pats Theta’s cheek and stands.

“Sorry,” Theta says.

Koschei nods as if this is only right and walks back to the console: Theta’s blood sticky on his fingertips. “I’ll fly us back on my own,” he says. “You just sit there and try not to do anything stupid until we’re back on Gallifrey.”

“Righd,” Theta says. He shifts himself into a more comfortable position. “You still owe me den pounds, by de way.”

Koschei grins at him, basking in his attention, as the Time Rotor wheezes between them.

*

They arrive back on Gallifrey a week after their departure, which Koschei attributes to his distracted mental state. This time the hanger is filled with guards, who escort Koschei and Theta into the presence of the senior tutors.

They already know about the rift, of course - presumably everyone on the entire planet felt the lurch as it sealed itself - and they deliver the expected tedious speeches about responsibility and broken trust, but no one seems as angry as they ought to be. Borusa is practically smirking.

Theta accepts the blame for interfering, and Koschei owns up to aiding and abetting. The sentence, when passed, is absurdly lenient: Theta gets a year tutoring the new intake of novices, Koschei six months. Given that they both had three years of life removed the time they burned down the Geography wing in the library, it’s fairly clear that although the official line is necessarily one of disapproval, all of the tutors are impressed and those who have had some part training Theta are smugly proud of him. The Boy Who Healed The Rift. It makes Koschei sick.

People point and stare at them as they walk back to their rooms: the story has obviously got around already. Theta seems genuinely embarrassed, but he glows with power and everyone can see it now. All the effort Koschei put into humbling him in the TARDIS console room turns out to be for nothing. Strangers keep knocking on their door to offer congratulations and Borusa leads a round of applause at lunch one day. Theta obviously doesn’t want this, but it doesn’t matter. Everything is ruined.

Koschei gives Theta his ten pounds and tutors the novices. He refuses to go on any more expeditions with Theta, studies independently instead of with him, passes his driving test where Theta fails, and when they graduate sixty years later, he achieves a higher degree class. He appears infinitely superior to Gallifrey and his former roommate and so it seems only logical that he take the name Master when he sheds his old title. By then, the incident in the Medusa Cascade has been largely forgotten, unless one of the nearby planets is causing trouble, at which point some wit will invariably point out that things would be a lot simpler if they’d just been sucked through the rift.

But the Master never forgets, and when Theta begins to style himself as ‘the Doctor’ he knows the Doctor hasn’t either. He is The Boy Who Healed The Rift grown into The Man Who Makes People Better and every time the Master sees him he is torn between the urge to shove him against a wall and kiss him before he has time to object, and the urge to run. He never allows himself either satisfaction, but sometimes he taunts the Doctor by reminding him about the rift and he sees a flicker of something like recognition in the Doctor’s eyes. Beautiful and terrifying.


End file.
